The Shelbyville City Council tabled a zone change request from Desilets LLC during Thursday’s regular meeting at city hall.

City Attorney Steven Gregory reviewed the different courses of action the council could take, but with a council that have very little experience with zone changes, and one council member absent from the meeting, the decision on a course of action was tabled for a later meeting.

Desilets requested a zone change from the Triple S Planning Commission in January to change its location at 310 Martin Luther King Street, with frontage on Washington Street, from Downtown Commercial (D_C) to Light Industrial (I-1).

The injection-molding company has been operating on a non-conforming use exemption since it’s opening in 2006, but now with the need to expand to fit a new product line and storage, Desilets needs to operate in the proper zone.

However, Triple S voted to not recommend the change to the city council because the I-1 zoning does not fit the Comprehensive Plan or the future land use map.

Gregory told council members that they have several options when they do decide how they would like to handle the decision.

“You could go simply off the information provided to you by the Triple S commission and either accept their recommendation, or you could go against their recommendation,” he said.

“Or you could gather more information by opening the request for more information from the parties involved. Or you could open it up for another full-scale public hearing.”

Because council members had notified Triple S that they would make a ruling – if they had not the commission’s recommendation would have been accepted in 21 days – they have 90 days to take action.

“It seems like in the past, the way we handled things was to have additional comments, but that was when I was on the council,” Mayor Tom Hardesty said.

Gregory noted that if council members do accept new comments from the public or from the parties involved that they must be new information, not just rehashing what was noted in the Triple S public hearing.

Any vote on the zone change would need a full council majority – four votes.

Ficosa resolution

The council approved a resolution for Ficosa North America Shelbyville that would help provide up to 116 new jobs. The resolution will lower the city’s occupational tax for those new hires to .75 percent from 1.5 percent for a 5-year period.

The incentive is the second one that the city has passed this year – Katayama American Company received a waiver in January.

Although the resolutions are new, the city for years has offered incentives to companies. However, now the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development is requiring the city to send in a resolution to specify the incentive rather than simply a letter, as had been the case.

On top of the local incentive, the state matches three times the amount, 2.25 percent in this case, from its state tax collection.

In total, the company would receive a 3 percent tax cut that it could use to finance an expansion that creates the additional jobs.

Heard in a report from City Engineer/Director of Public Works Jennifer Herrell that the Public Works Department and Fire Department combined to earn a safety grant worth about $10,000, that Shelbyville Clean-Up Week would be April 8-12 and that the city issued seven driveway permits, all from new construction.

Eilene Collins, director of Shelby Development Corp., said in her report that on April 25 there would be a sidewalk gardening program hosted by Walt Recihert, Shelby County Extension horticulture technician.

Heard in a report from Hardesty that the Chamber Showcase would be Saturday at Shelby County High School.